Everyone Hates Google.cn

By consumerist.comJanuary 26, 2006

Apparently, we weren’t the only ones upset by what Consumerist commenter Hawkins described as Google’s “capitulation to the commie bastards”… although he followed it up with: “But I submit that a constant reminder, every time you search, that you’re being dicked again by your government is better than nothing.” Which are the exact words that Google themselves should have used at the press conference. You might want to submit your C.V. to Google P.R., Hawkins.

To return to our point — Pajamas Media has started up a new blog on the current trend of American companies spinelessly capitulating to China’s censorship-happy government. It’s called China Syndrome. It appears to be a fairly objective look at the subject, posting an image of Google founders as Dr. Evil and Mini-Me right above a post pointing out that Google has also gone along with silent censorship of bomb-making instructions in the US. Which we at the Consumerist feel is just as bad, since planning for the violent overthrow of a tyrannical government is your constitutional right.

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Starting the flame war now. Kind of surprised that I’m the first post here…

I didn’t like the idea of a censored google in China at first… After hashing the idea around a bit, I’m cautiously optimistic about this.

Giving the chinese people access to some information is better than giving them access to NO information. Plus, they might be able to find better tools to access information.

Plus, the filter may give the chinese government a false sense of security about the internet. Why do things by hand when you can have a computer do it almost as good? You can always count on people to be lazy when they have the opportunity.

Google’s not going to have a perfect filter… And, god forbid, it might have some gaping flaws in it… ;) It takes a while to get these kinks worked out…

This may be wishful thinking, but I’d like to see responses to gov’t requests that go something like the following: “You’d like us to filter what? Oh, that will require a major revision, lest we block out some of your gov’t servers. We’ll get a team right on that.” (…in three weeks. And then we’ll screw it up and unblock something else.)